e both to miff off?"

"Something of that sort. Very likely they would have understood each
other better if they had been a little older and wiser...."

"Like us?" says Sally, with perfect unconsciousness of one aspect of
the remark. "And then they might have gone on till now." Regret that
they did not do so is on her face, till she suddenly sees a new
contingency. "But then we shouldn't have had Jeremiah. I shouldn't have
fancied that at all." She doesn't really see why the doctor smiled at
this, but adds a grave explanation: "I mean, if I'd tried both, I might
have preferred my step." But there they were at Glenmoira Road, and
must say good-bye till Brahms on Thursday.

Only, the doctor did (as a matter of history) walk down that road with
Sally as far as the gate with Krakatoa Villa on it, and got home late
for his mid-day Sunday dinner, and was told by his mother that he might
have considered the servants. She herself was, meekly, out of it.

CHAPTER XVIII

OF A SWIMMING-BATH, "ET PRAETEREA EXIGUUM"

This was the best of the swimming-bath season, and Sally rarely passed
a day without a turn at her favourite exercise. If her swimming-bath
had been open on Sunday, she wouldn't have gone to church yesterday,
not even to meet Dr. Vereker and talk about her father to him. As it
was, she very nearly came away from Krakatoa Villa next morning without
waiting to see the letter from Rheims, the post being late. Why _is_
everything late on Monday?

However, she was intercepted by the postman and the foreign postmark--a
dozen words on a card, but she read them several times, and put the
card in her pocket to show to Laetitia Wilson. She was pretty sure to be
there. And so she was, and by ten o'clock had seen the card and
exhausted its contents. And by five-minutes-past Sally was impending
over the sparkling water of Paddington swimming-bath. She was dry so
far, and her blue bathing-dress could stick out. But it was not to be
for long, for her two hands went together after a preliminary stretch
to make a cutwater, and down went Sally with a mighty splash into the
deep--into the moderately deep, suppose we say--at any rate into ten
thousand gallons of properly filtered Thames water, which had been
(no doubt) sterilised and disinfected and examined under powerful
microscopes until it hadn't got a microbe to bless itself with. When
she came up at the other end, to taunt Laetitia Wilson with her
cowardice for not d